Blink to Break the Magic
by Mackenzie L
Summary: Countless times he spoke to her in sheer and striking silence, ever present even in her dreams. Missing moments, Pre-Twilight. Prequel to "Stained Glass Soul." - Carlisle/Esme.
1. Blink to Break the Magic

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Blink to Break the Magic

**by Mackenzie L.**

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This is going to be a multiple-chapter fic of moments from Carlisle and Esme's life together and apart.

(Rated T, but may change in the future)

_*The Twilight Saga and its characters belong to Stephenie Meyer._

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How did you feel when I first took your hand?

When I first heard you land

On my heart's softened sand?

How did you feel when I first let you see

What you had done

To the hero in me?

How could you have seen me when no one else had?

Did you think of me fondly

Even when I was sad?

How do you keep your eyes shining so bright?

Even while lost

In the shadows of night?

How do your arms still long to embrace,

Having heard me sing sins

And seen lust on my face?

How can you want me after all I have done?

How am I blessed

To be your only one?

How does our love grow, year after year?

Do you think that it knows

Our end will never near?

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**_A/N: _**_This untitled poem was written by me, in about five minutes. You can make fun of it if you want, but just make sure to visit the next chapter afterward. There are no more poems, I promise. :)_

_You can also find the link to the banner I made for this story on my profile. _


	2. An Ache in the Making

**An Ache in the Making**

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_"Pain pays the income of each precious thing." _—_ William Shakespeare_

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Doctors didn't look like this.

Someone had spun the sun into silk, and placed it carefully, like a halo around his head. Someone had dipped a paintbrush into the whitest snow and let it melt over his skin. Whomever this _someone _was had been blessed by the heavens above.

Esme envied the imagination who had injected this dream with life.

The lines of his movements left long, golden marks in her vision, like waving a glowing torch in the dark. His scent was like breathing in a sea of broken daydreams, and somehow his footsteps never made the floorboards creak.

It was thrilling having someone like this in her _house. _He may as well have been a king; his presence, to _her_, was just as worthy of wonder and adoration.

His motions stirred the air around her, each arm and leg, and shoulder and hand demanding her complete attention whenever he moved them. His eyes deftly scanned the room as he shifted pieces of furniture around to accommodate a place beside her.

Esme watched in fascination as her doctor worked to construct the perfect space to his liking. It seemed he had to have everything just right before he began… Esme liked that.

After a while, he moved a chair to the edge of the sofa where she lay and rolled up his sleeves, revealing the length of his forearms. The fabric crinkled as he tucked it neatly around his left elbow, then his right; the skin that hid beneath was smooth like porcelain, lily-white like his face. The mute grays and blacks of his clothing just helped to accentuate the brightness of _him. _

Esme didn't know why, but she felt the need to sit up straighter in his presence.

"You mustn't try to get up, Miss_,_" he said, lifting his hand as a sign that she should lay back down. "You will do fine to remain just as you are."

Obedience came quite naturally when this man spoke. Bemused, Esme lay her head down on the rough cushions behind her. Her eyes tried to gather the lines of his face as he moved, but it was impossible to fit together the puzzle pieces of a miracle.

Something at the corner of his lip twitched infinitesimally, his eyes still fixed on the doctor's bag in his lap. "What is your name?" he asked, his tone gentle.

"Esme," she whispered, terrified that she'd almost forgotten. At sixteen-years-old.

"I apologize that we're meeting under such dismal circumstances, Miss Esme," he said, his voice crisp but smooth, like warm honey on toast. He looked up at her, his eyes dewy and gold. He was so very beautiful, she almost forgot to blink. "I'm Doctor Cullen."

His smile made music on her heartstrings, and she couldn't be sure if she managed to smile back.

The expression on his face was not sad, but it did not wear proudly the color of jubilation. Something imperceptibly crucial was missing from the angle of his lips and whatever was missing had cursed his smile to just fall short of absolute radiance. Esme watched the doctor's momentary joy fade as he turned his eyes to assess her right leg. He made displeased little ticking noises with his tongue as he surveyed the dreadful state of her twisted limb.

"How did this happen?" he asked, and there was a begging note of almost mystified delight in his tone, as if he were inquiring how she had attained a somewhat glamorous battle scar...

"It was... I was—er—climbing outside. In a tree," she stuttered, struggling to find her bearings and more importantly words that made sense. The doctor's eyes furrowed as she tried to clear her throat, but then she settled for something a little simpler. "I fell from a tree."

Doctor Cullen smiled softly, and the unexpectedness of the smile caused Esme's pulse to leap. His eyelids lowered as he pulled his gaze away from her, taking note of his surroundings in a curious manner.

"Where I come from, climbing a tree would be unheard of for a young lady such as yourself."

Esme flushed furiously, suddenly realizing just how embarrassed she should have been to reveal not only her clumsiness but her blatantly improper activities as well.

The doctor lifted his face in a way she read as proud just a moment where his noble profile caught the light of the lamp and made her feel terribly inadequate. Surely Doctor Cullen knew many fine, proper, conventionally well-mannered ladies from the city. Surely he was popular and wealthy and most likely courting the most fashionable females in Columbus.

This thought made Esme want to cry.

Her eyes prickled lightly as she watched his hands move, organizing things and rummaging through the black bag. His fingers were lean and certain looking, dexterous as a doctor's should be, but somehow humble… the thumb was firm, the forefingers were agile, the last were quick to follow. Each hand was well endowed with the same, concentrated set. Yes, Esme felt she could trust such fingers.

Her heart did a little flutter as he slid the black bag at last from his lap and reached one of those beautiful hands out toward her leg…

"Do I have your permission?" he was asking.

"Pardon?"

She turned her eyes up to his, and her hands felt clammy.

"May I feel for where you are broken?" he repeated, his hand hovering inches above her bare ankle.

He was asking to touch her.

"Oh... of course."

Concentrated fully on his task, he pinched the end of her tattered, grass-stained skirt between his two forefingers and gingerly slid the fabric up, slowly over her leg, and let it fall on the knob of her knee. She wondered if he could see the goose bumps on her skin.

"Does this hurt?" he asked, his voice penetrating the silence that enveloped them.

His finger nudged her kneecap. She suppressed a gasp, startled by how cold he was.

"No."

He pouted, as if it were offensive news that his touch did not cause her pain.

"What if I do this?"

Gently, his hand moved down to squeeze the underside of her calf.

She shook her head, even though that had hurt a little.

"Hmm."

Watching her doctor struggle to find points of pain, Esme couldn't help but smile.

His fingers were playing. He wasn't really looking for ill spots at all... His eyes weren't at all perplexed. Surely he was only teasing her...

His fingers flickered down the length of her bare leg, painting her skin with winter. His touch tickled, and stung, and ached. He held her ankle up, cupping her heel in his chilly palm, and she curled her toes around the air, delighted in spite of the cold and the pain.

"How does this feel?" he asked huskily, his hand tightening slightly on her ankle.

He looked down at her, and a quick shot of pain wove through her muscle.

"Strange."

His eyes had changed color again. First they were golden, now they were copper. He took a deep breath and swallowed.

His hand moved up to the middle of her leg, and that was when she jerked back in alarm. The pain was so great she felt it shudder all the way up into her head. Suddenly her stomach was churning and she felt unpleasantly dizzy...

"I need to set the bones, now," he was murmuring. "It will be very painful for you, but just remember that it is a healing pain..."

She could hardly hear him.

_A healing pain…_ Was there even such a thing in this world? Or was this just the invention of a wistful doctor?

His face was so lovely when he was sad.

Into his hands her leg went, helpless and quivering. His knuckles flexed as he gripped both sides of her calf, and her stomach twisted in revulsion at how strong his hands looked...

Right before he did it, he apologized.

"Forgive me," he whispered, and he winced and closed his eyes.

Esme wanted to shout that she wasn't ready; she wanted to swat his hands away and tell him that she just needed another second or two to prepare herself... but nothing could have prepared her for this.

Her cries echoed in shatters around the room as the pain tore through her, from her toes to her hip, and back again. It was all over, migrating like a mad virus through her body up her back and into her neck, and stinging behind her eyes.

She spilled out tears and sobs like a toddler while he tried in vain to comfort her.

The way pain leaves the body is fascinating.

It starts with a single, lone wave a buttery breeze of bliss and if we try to catch onto it, it will only reward us with more hurt. But if we sit back and wait patiently for this wave to grow, it will bring with it a soothing tide, cresting at the peak of the pain and washing it all away.

Doctor Cullen must have been quite familiar with this strange little dance of pain.

He found a moment to stare into his patient's bleary eyes, and that was when the pain fizzled out. Even through the glass of her swelling tears, she saw him blurry but beautiful. She felt a cold hand rest upon her shoulder, a hushing voice flower in her ears. And her sobs receded.

"It's going away…" she marveled, her words blending into each other as her eyes opened then closed then opened again. "It's going away," she repeated, because it was such a miraculous thing, and he needed to hear it.

Her doctor bowed his head, his eyelashes resting neatly over the glow.

"Pain works in mysterious ways," he said softly.

She wanted to thank him, just for sharing this unprecedented bit of wisdom with her. His voice echoed silkily in the haze of her thoughts; her breath evened, and her eyes dried.

For a few seconds, with his hand on her shoulder and the rhythm of his breath in her ears, Esme knew the tragic taste of wholeness. Yet she was too young to experience a feeling so profound, and when the moment came for her to feel it, her heart was intimidated by the pressure of such a powerful emotion. She cast the feeling away out of fear, out of pure confusion.

This moment would be forgotten after the years passed her by. This man would be nothing more than a velvet-voiced memory gathering dust in the back of her mind.

He was so close to her... Esme could see more in the confused color of his eyes than she could see in the rest of his face. He was suffering just as much as she... but she could not fathom why.

A man like him did not belong to this world. He was discontent here; she could see it beneath the regal tones of his changing eyes. He was certain, but somehow so lost. He was assured, but somehow bereft.

Doctor Cullen was truly just a wisp of golden beauty in a fair night breeze. He was there, then he was gone. This man was floating through life, his feet never truly touching the ground. He pierced the darkness wherever he went, but the glow he left behind faded far too quickly.

Esme wanted to latch her rosy-knuckled fingers onto his cape of shunned shadows and follow him until he glided into the peaceful dimension from whence he came. She wanted to _know _him. She wanted to be scandalized by the contents of _his_ heart.

But she never had the chance.

Neither of them knew why he left.

As the last swift blink of lightning illuminated the sitting room, he wrapped himself up in his coat, leaving behind a newly cast leg and one very disappointed teenager.

That was one of the least meaningful moments of her life the moment right after he left.

The door closed, and it was like a gunshot the last sound she heard before her mind was gone.

She could see his silhouette flicker across the window; she could hear the soft taper of his footsteps as he walked away. Further and further away from her, until he was silence.

She was locked in silence.

Everything that had just happened was already fading. It was like it never _had_ happened... already. And Esme was shaking all over with the effort to grasp it all back before it disappeared for good. But it was slipping through her fingers like everything else. His face, his words, his scent. All abandoning her.

Her eyes leaked with fresh tears, but the pain was so much different now. So much worse. She would have gladly had her bones set once more, if it only meant she could have _him _by her side for one more moment...

She swiped her tears away on her wrist, and looked around frantically for any evidence that he had really been there. Finding nothing to keep her heart sane, she fumbled for the only distraction in sight.

With one hand, Esme strained to reach for the dish of peppermints by the sofa. Her leg stung as she stretched, but the newly dressed wrappings helped her mind to draw the pain away. Her fingers wriggled towards the ceramic dish, and she gasped as it slid away from her...

Her eyes wandered over the edge of the sofa, watching as the candies tumbled and scattered across the dusty pink carpet. For a moment or two, Esme just lay there and stared at the mess, watching and waiting. She didn't know what she was waiting for, but she knew it would never come.

Do you know what it's like wanting to taste something you cannot reach?

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_**A/N:**__ Well that's how everything begins, so I thought it would be appropriate to delve a little deeper into their first meeting to start things off. You can see more of Esme and Carlisle's first meeting in my story Stained Glass Soul, too. Please review and let me know what you think. _

_To see the banner I made for this story, click on the link in my profile. _


	3. Earthbound

**Earthbound**

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_"There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday. Robert Nathan_

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Teatime was the most awful time of day.

It would be slightly more bearable, Esme thought, if there were no newly born puppies trampling over the carpet beneath the table, or if the sitting room wasn't quite so stuffy and hot, or if there were not so many glorious shades of emerald and peridot swarming outside the windows…

A curtain of lace, a curtain of humidity they were both the same. Her world was upside-down and tilly-tally, and what have you. She was distracted by everything. Pathetic though it was, she could not help but think how closely the pale ceramic saucer matched his skin; how finely the spoonful of honey resembled his eyes…

These little reminders sent her gaze darting for the open window again and again. She longed to be outside on this sweltering day. Better to be toasted by the sun than by a cup of tea.

From the corner, she could make out the distant tree on the hill, not so far away. It was worth a good sprint to reach. It was her new favorite place to live.

Since her bandaging had been removed, Esme spent every spare second she had underneath that tree. She was not permitted to climb it, but her heart was content to sleep beneath its shade, to smell its earthen scent, and know that it was here forever. She dragged musty old books outside with her and stacked them in the grass so that she could stay for hours in an outdoor library. She shooed and chased the puppies away for fear that they would desecrate her precious plant in any obscene manner. She laughed to herself and crushed dandelions with her bare feet and sighed when no one was listening, _"Oh, Doctor…"_

She would tumble into the grass, limp and stocking-less and wonderful in the heat of summer. Then her head would fall against the tree trunk, and her hair would snag on the bark. And her eyes watered when she realized it was all a frivolous fantasy…

Esme blushed at her own foolishness, but at the same time, she savored it. It was simply youth at its brightest peak, joy in its sweetest shape. But it was tragic that a man who had visited her for only one night could have such strong manipulation over her heart.

The trio of proper ladies who shared her table lifted their teacups in a pattern that grew more predictable by the second. First Helga, then Lydia, then Mathilda. They sipped with pursed lips and pretended the muscles in their throats did not exist. They closed their eyes as if they could not bear to witness the dust that dared to float before their faces.

The housemaid would come around occasionally and slip one pudgy hand between their chairs to refill the milk or tidy up napkins that were not being used. Her apron was thick, and just looking at it made Esme perspire around the neck.

The three porcelain dolls at the table spoke to one another in mature, haughty tones that still bore the lingering lisp of children. Their words were dull and empty, like leaves without chlorophyll. They had no artistic value to their faces, either. Painted lips, combed lashes, false blush to taint their cheeks. They covered the love the sun had given them throughout the summer, with snowy powders and frosty creams. They embalmed summer with winter. With their vacant expressions, their unfeeling gazes.

Esme rolled her eyes when no one was watching, and though her head was firmly set upon her poorly-postured shoulders, her thoughts were dangling from a tree outside. Truth be told, Esme could think of far better things to do than spend the day swatting fruit fleas away from a cup of Earl Grey she had no interest in drinking. Why drink hot tea in the summer? Where was the practicality in that?

One sip of the stuff made her wince in detest.

So she reached for the sugar.

A stray sugar cube danced across the tablecloth as she tried to pluck it out of its jar her token attempt at daintiness gone awry as usual. It rolled onto the floor, but before she could reach for it, a gust of moist breath on her ankle told her it was too late.

She kicked lightly at the eager puppy and folded her arms across her chest.

Was there nothing sweet in her life?

"Esme?" they called to her. Someone slammed the teapot down with a nasty, musical clink. "Esme!"

If she was feeling gracious, she would snap back to reality to respond with a harsh little stare of indifference. But she never gave them the satisfaction of a verbal response.

They demanded it of her, still. "Where on earth are you, child?"

Where, indeed.

Esme never had an answer for this question. They had eventually all stopped asking. She was nowhere tangible, nowhere_ in_ the world. But she was all over the place _outside of it_.

The air was clearer out here. The summertime humidity faded away, along with the chime of the old clock and the out-of-tune piano and the flurry of puppy paws around her feet.

Outside the world, anything was possible. Everything she could dare to imagine, whether it was senseless or not, was sure to come true.

They could poke at her and call her silly names all they wanted, but that would never change the fact that she was already gone.

Because Esme was a dreamer.

At the end of those hectic days, she liked to light a candle for inspiration and sit at her desk, facing the window that looked out at the plantation. She pondered in quiet times, which were few and in between. But Esme always made time for silence.

She was fine to sacrifice an hour or two from her night to think of things of life and of people. She was lonely, here and there, but she never told anyone of her loneliness. They would laugh at her, asking how she could be lonely when surrounded by so many people... They would call her a fool, and they often did.

Here, in her dark bedroom with only her candle for company, Esme could be alone in peace, with no one to laugh and say she was not alone.

Until now, she had been lonely without a face to fill the void in her mind. Faces features and expressions and beauty were so difficult to create from nothing. She had needed something to spark the inspiration, and she had finally found it... in the form of a mysterious blond doctor.

From the corner of her wistful eye, she would see a sliver of his gorgeous smile, flickering in the candle flame. She whipped her head around to catch it, but it always escaped her; it always bested her senses.

His scent had lingered for far too short a time in the sitting room where he had tended to her leg. Esme collected every cushion from that room and placed them reverently on her bed. But they held no essence of him not even a single spot of sweetness for her to sniff. She was in desolation, having so little to sustain her memory of him; all she was left with were gnawing, viral questions.

She found herself wondering desperately what his life was like. Where had he come from and where was he going? What made him sad; what brought him joy? Was he a man of faith, or a wanderer in the way of religion? Why was he so cold to the touch? Did he long for someone to warm him?

Was he as perfect on the inside as he appeared on the outside?

It seemed simply maddening that a man of such impossible beauty and kindness could exist in her world.

Her thoughts strained around this man until they had weakened, unable to stretch any further to accommodate his perfection. If she thought about him for too long, she began to doubt his realness...

The window would grow dark, and her heart would sink in sad synchronization with the sun. As with everything else in her world, shadows set in like sly, spotty soldiers. They pulled away the light, gripping strings of luminosity in their spindly black hands. They tugged them tauntingly, rushing out her door with heartless cackles that echoed in the hall.

Esme had learned to dread watching the sun go down from her bedroom window. She knew the nights ahead would serve her sumptuous waves of torture. It had all started since he had showed up at her door.

As she slept in her bed at night, she was visited by a deviant spirit of seduction. She crept under her covers, held them tightly to her chin as she whispered her prayers, and lay her head on the pillow to welcome a slumber which never pulled her under.

She would wait, her breath growing ragged as she counted the minutes before they came.

The hands.

They would start with just the ghosting of several fingers over her ankle. She would sigh from the tickle, and move her foot away. But they always caught her again. She was so easily won over by their touch.

Up the length of her leg they swept, gently, decidedly. They knew where they were going.

These hands were cool and hard and certain against her body.

She knew not to whom they belonged.

No, she did know. She knew too well. So well that she would have died before she admitted his name.

That name. It seemed so unreal in this dream sequence so like a cleverly crafted alias.

She never said it out loud.

Esme whimpered and writhed as the hands traveled the premature dips and curves of her young body; she cried and struggled as their touch seemed to slacken, grow distant, lose strength.

And then she woke up, drenched in her own cold, clammy sweat. Her night-slip clung to her scrawny limbs, the white cotton made to match her flesh as it encased her body like wet tissue paper.

These hormonal dreams were unbearable.

They were taunting, fleeting. Never enough. They haunted her for the rest of her day, for there was always the next night to dread, in suspenseful anticipation that she would be the victim of another such dream.

Esme peeled the offending fabric from around her body, cringing as the cold air hit her bare skin. She sat, soaked and shivering on the edge of the mattress, her hands clutching at her developing breasts, covering them though no one was present. She was embarrassed even by the thought of the man who possessed that pulchritudinous pair of hands.

Her eyes drifted closed, and a frighteningly helpless whimper escaped her lips as her mind taunted her with evanescent images of the man whose hands she dreamt.

He was very handsome and very blond… That much she knew.

Every part of her mind was working to admonish her for the nature of her thoughts, but she was hopelessly lost in the vivid recollection of those fingers… so bold, yet so tender. So…gentle. He was always gentle…

Why must the gentlest of touches elicit the most violent trembling?

Prey to the profound ache she felt cleave into her core, Esme reclined onto the dampened sheets, eyes still squeezed tightly shut as though to stave off the demons that surely were producing such thoughts in her head.

But they were such wonderful thoughts sinful, perhaps. But so terribly wonderful…

She could imagine the way he would touch her. He had touched her several times before she had promised herself to always recall every detail of the sacred experience, but she had failed. And she had to pay the price for her failure every night in splendid torture, imagining his touch.

She remembered where he had touched her.

Right leg. Forehead. Elbow. Shoulder. Back.

Two inches down three to the left. Four millimeters across two millimeters above.

Yes, she remembered exactly where he had touched her.

She also remembered where he hadn't touched her.

Yes, this was a much longer list. But with every dream that recalled his touch, the list grew shorter.

Tonight his touch had crossed the unspoken boundary marked by her knee. His fingers had boldly carried their caress along, heaven-bound in their slow journey north...

Esme gasped softly as the touch whispered away on her thigh, gently finishing his abandoned journey with her own tentative fingers. But hers were nothing like his they were not the fingers of a surgeon.

She swallowed, though there was scarcely anything in her mouth to aid the instinctive action. All of the moisture was on the outside of her body. And with each recollection of the intense dream, she felt a little more seep through her, cold and hot all over.

His touch made even the most innocent of places on her body feel forbidden, thrilling. There was not a single place left on her body that did not ache for him, now.

She wanted him back.

She curled her knees up to her chest, hands pressed over her belly.

What a delicious sensation that confession produced in her…

She wanted to think of him on more explicit terms, but such thoughts were so dangerous. She became a stranger unto herself when she thought like this. But Lord forgive her, she couldn't help it.

She could see his figure in the shadows, and somehow he made the shadows bright. They were luminous, luxurious, elegant and fleeting. Just like him.

His gaze darted down her body, clinically seductive. His eyes were crisp yet cloudy, harboring secrets and golden gardens of wisdom to flourish through his singular stare. These eyes were impossible, too filled with fantasy to be real… but she had seen them. God had somehow allowed this man to have these eyes.

The doctor's hand reached up to straighten his necktie, and he turned his chin away, knowing the openness of his profile invited her heart to pound harder. His abundant blond hair caught the gleam of the moonlight, and echoes of night washed around him. His face appeared behind the flowing curtains of her window a sheer ghost, a vigilant angel of dusk. He was white and hollow and barely there, but his presence was so, so thick.

She breathes. Ragged, uneven, labored breaths. Harder and faster and then... they subside.

Breathing like this clears her mind. At least for a while.

She buries her face in her hands and sobs silently, reeling with the guilt she would be made to endure in confession every Sunday. Her thoughts had been beyond impure since the day she had seen him. And she had never once mentioned such sins to the pastor, for fear of his judgment.

She could not reveal this weakness to anyone but God alone. She asked Him to relieve her of the demons, but He did not receive her prayers in good favor. She was doing something wrong.

Esme never really _wanted_ to let go of these thoughts. Deep down, she knew, a true cleansing was not possible so long as she was ignoring one very crucial point: she would have to abandon all memories of Doctor Cullen. As grounded and faithful a Christian she was, Esme could never bring herself to do this.

Because of her neglect, every day her body grew more womanly, and every day she seared with an overpowering passion. Flames of reproachable desire scorched her limbs... her femininity, which she damned.

How she laughed bitterly at her distress. This innocent man had no inkling of what he had done to her. He went about his life, healing the sick and suffering because that was what he did, and he never knew... That she had been made to suffer the pain of his departure from her life with daily strikes of a restless allegory. A war had broken out within her heart. Because this was what she felt, day to day, hour to hour, second to second, with every fiber of her being. And it was inescapable in ways that nothing else could ever be. Somehow she knew, she would forever be consumed by him, no matter what joy, what riches, what enlightenment her life brought her. He would always be there, and she would burn if she could not be one with him.

There was but one way to see his face one possibility sparkling in the back of her mind...

She decided the pain would be well worth one more moment with him at her side.

Rolling out of her bed one night, Esme crept into the hall and navigated the dark angles of a staircase that did everything it could to give her away in the silence. Creak after vengeful creak the floorboards betrayed her, but she fled from the back door before the rest woke.

The shimmer of moonlight on the top of that hill was so breathlessly appealing. She was swallowed by a carrying breeze, being gently lifted towards the gangly silhouette of her destination. Mother Nature was kind to her restless child that night, granting wings to the young woman who raced through fields for her absent beloved.

Esme's nightdress swished against the tall grass, her feet pressed tough but tender marks in the dirt as she sprinted with a little help from the wind. Though it had been weeks since she was healed enough to walk again, her leg still ached delightfully when she tried to run. She wanted to hold onto this ache forever, because it was the last thing in her world she had the last piece of evidence that supported his existence… Oh, it hurt so beautifully when she ran.

She slowed as she approached the small tree, her breath running short as she trudged up the hill to reach it. She felt as though she were approaching a perfect brown and green temple, as if the ground beneath her was hallowed, marking a memorial for her destiny.

She'd often looked out of windows to see that tree. To think it had been so insignificant to her before all of this happened... Her eyes had glanced over it so many times, taking instead to admire the great spruces and charming apple trees that grew neatly in rows, on flat ground by the farm. Not on a hill. Not deviant and far away from the others. This tree was a castaway.

That was why she belonged in it.

Esme wrapped her small hand round the first rough branch, took one sole of her foot against the trunk, and raised herself up with a grunt of soft determination that was erased by the wind. And she was home.

Everything below looked so much smaller at night, but the moon looked larger. A bright silver circle of marvelous power, hanging in the sky. The night sky was vast, open like an upside down field of ebony silk and she found it almost terrifying.

The night was pierced with romance, somehow Esme could feel it lightly stinging her cheeks as the wind blew, like the desperate breath of a lover that did not exist. She blushed in spite of herself, knowing very well the wind was not wanton; the breeze did not pine for her affections. But she let the air beat gently against her from the highest branch; she let it kiss her forehead and stroke her hair.

It was glorious up here. She was once again a primal princess in a tower of fine leaves she wore a crown of humidity and a pearl necklace of perspiration. A gown of grass-stained cotton and a cape of long caramel ringlets.

Freedom was wide and rich and fragrant out here. To be inside anywhere, trapped, confined, restrained was a nightmare for Esme. She was born to be outside. She was the love child of nature and wild imagination.

Her lips lost a wingless laugh to the wind as her eyes swept over her land, like a queen surveying her kingdom from a castle. The night was still frightening, but she had become a part of it she had a piece of night's quiet power.

And as her gaze took in a wayward slant of moonlight, she could have sworn she saw him.

One bright edge of his youthful face, sliced inside the empty air.

Her breath caught in a glorious gasp as she reached out with slippery fingers to grasp him. But he was gone.

The pressure in her heart was swelling, her emotions were begging her to resurrect this desire. She knew only one truth, and only one purpose.

Dangling herself over the end of the topmost branch, Esme was filled with a rush of dismal excitement. It was too late to be safe, but too early to let go.

Her eyes studied the ground below, asking it to be kind to resist her when she fell; to do well the work of injury. If she jumped, she could have him. It was not a guaranteed hope it was a gamble. And she knew it was.

She vowed herself to him, nevertheless. Anyone who knew of her struggle would tell her she was losing her mind. She was only sixteen, and he was only a doctor, and he was only gone forever. But they didn't have to know how she clung to him like saving grace.

_He_ didn't have to know. Doctor Cullen could carry on with his life he could breathe and walk and eventually he could die, and Esme would accept this.

Her life would happen in much the same way; their lives could be identical, but they would be blind to it, having never crossed the other's path.

She would never have him. But damn it all, he would have her.

And so, with this irrational promise burning in her heart, Esme let go.

* * *

_**A/N: **I enjoyed having the chance to explore "tragic, romantic, rebellious" Esme a bit here. Isn't she so beautifully hopeless? _

_A review would mean so much to me. Just a few words will do. _

_Thank you for reading,_

_Mackenzie_


	4. And Now the Thought is Finished

**And Now the Thought is Finished**

* * *

_"Your absence has gone through me  
Like thread through a needle  
Everything I do is stitched with its color."  
— W.S. Merwin_

******-}0{-**

An immortal man has only so many things about which he can think.

Where is his mind made to wander? Through what desperate tunnels should his fantasies lead him? Under what moonlit bridges do the waters of his peace-bearing spirit flow?

There were nights, occasionally deep nights full of clever worries and loathsome memories when the doctor fell into favor with fate. His mind was flurrying into lesser traveled directions directions he had been too frightened to follow, upon paths he was too intrigued to ignore.

The night was a tender widow who begged for his company. She was safe, she was dark; she offered him protection from the burning lights and the eyes of suspicion. She whispered his name, and no other whispered it as she did. Not the dawn nor the dusk nor the twilight. Only night.

_"Carlisle..." _her silvery tongue eloped with his ear, in the most dead hour of darkness. No other timbre had ever brushed his heart with such passion, such care.

He walked alone, by the cemetery on these hushed, hallowed nights. The changing seasons did not discourage his engagements with the shadows. He would walk these stony paths of silence whether it be the crisp fog of winter or the humid haze of summer in the air.

The gate was always heavier than the last time he had to open it. He let himself into the cemetery grounds, knowing he was welcome among the dead. Ironic for its utter lack of irony, Carlisle felt at home here in the stark, silent plot between those iron swirls. The hills went on forever, misting away into the horizon in dim blues and greens. The endless mounds of weed-infested grass were peppered with graves, some rising up in slender silhouettes to trick the shadows with a crowned cross, a motionless angel.

It was a holy mess of moon-stained concrete. He was honored to be a part of it.

Sometimes he whispered to the graves. He read the names of those men and women who lay beneath the ground, and he asked them questions.

_"How is the afterlife for you?" _was his favorite thing to ask. He could only imagine how they would respond.

Gertrude March, deceased in 1902, would likely complain of the grime and ground critters creeping through her hair and eating away at her fine clothing. Colonel Roland Norbert would shout in rage about the diminutive dimensions of his coffin. The dead longed for the earth above, for the taste of tea, the epic glories of war. They longed for anything, Carlisle supposed, though they never really spoke of their secrets. They answered him clearly, instead, with their contented silence, but they never once cared to ask _him_ how he felt about _his _afterlife...

He told them anyway, doubting they had ears to listen. His story was vague, his descriptions bland. Carlisle Cullen was comfortable with silence. The written word was much grander for conveying not only reason but feeling as well. His emotions got along nicely with paper. His sentiments swam well in ink.

He carried his journal with him everywhere he went. Sometimes his patients would inquire as to the purpose of the small, beaten red book he held tucked against his hip. He wore it there, for protection, to guard his hollowness, to fill the void of his empty life with interactions that ventured beyond the world itself. His every fantasy was carefully penned into those pages. He had no need to read them, but just knowing they were there was a comfort to him. The musty scent of the browning pages was the closest to home he would ever come.

Sometimes Carlisle's mind wandered back to the days when darkness was not just a figment; it was a ferocious dragon that he had to defeat. He was successful in his quest, with the gilded armor of long-perfected wisdom on his back, the shining crust of his control around his shoulders. He thought his victory a wondrous one, but he never forgot its significance. There were too many days that lent themselves to forgetting. But a vampire never forgets.

_"The Golden-Eyed One,"_ they called him. _"Such a stranger! Who is he? He is not one of _us..._" _

They studied him with their scarlet eyes and furrowed brows. He was a scientific folly in their midst; nothing more than a poor design of nature, a runt of their elegant race.

Aro always chuckled. _"You are not a vampire, young Carlisle."_

Flanked by his brothers the surly and the serious Aro always looked the same. Whether he would sneer or simper, his face was devoid of all but wry intrigue and feigned, haughty indifference.

"_Who are you_?" he would taunt, a glossy note of glee in his tone. "_Who are you, Carlisle Cullen?_"

Carlisle had tried to answer this riddle of a question in every possible way.

"I am a vampire."

_That is debatable._

"I am man."

_That is obvious._

"I am a doctor."

_That is insignificant_

"I am a single soul trapped in the idle dimension between dimensions."

Then Aro's eyes would drift away. His clammy hand encased the doctor's, his ring-clad fingers glinting in the Italian sunset. He savored the rush of _everything _in the single touch. Carlisle was well aware that Aro bore witness to his every secret through this discomforting madness.

Yet it never bothered him. Deep down, Carlisle wanted to be seen. As much as he felt the need to hide, his need to be _seen _truly seen was just as great, if not greater. It twisted inside of him like the seduction of Medusa, and the light in his eyes was crushed by an empty reflection of the world around him. The touch of Aro's icy fingers, feeding from his thoughts, was like a soothing scrape against an open wound. Never feeling more vulnerable, Carlisle savored the intrusion without the choice to refuse it.

_Aro led him down into the Catacombs, where their conversation was kept in secret among the fellow corpses. Sad, sunken eyes of skulls peeked out, uninvited, listening to all their voices said. _

_"You do not show yourself to anyone, my friend," Aro's polite drawl accused. "This is why you have spent so many a year suffering in loneliness. You starve for companionship, yet you have trapped yourself by choosing to live among humans. You must turn them away when they come closer to you, while deep in your heart, you wish they would not have to be driven away."_

_"I do wish for more," Carlisle admitted, his eyes fixed on the single torch in the dark tomb. "I feel a great pull toward the immortal world sometimes."_

_"The invitation still stands, my friend," Aro smiled, his pasty face eerie in the shadows. "Join us."_

_Carlisle shook his head. "But my calling, I fear, is pulling more strongly in another direction..."_

Someone had to see him. _Someone _had to find a way into his soul.

This someone would not need a gift of mind-penetration, or an alternate sense, or violent force. They would need only a heart of purest interest, and arms open for the weight of his burden.

Carlisle was waiting for _someone_.

What would that be like? He wondered. When that someone arrived, approached him for the very first time, touched his shoulder with a gentle hand and asked him the same question he had been asked for ages only they would truly _mean it. _

_"Who are you?"_

They were not seeking any philosophical response. They did not want to debate the validity of his every trying answer. They simply wanted the _truth. _

_"Who are you, Carlisle Cullen?"_ Someone would whisper in earnest, _"I want to know you."_

The thought of telling anyone _who he was _terrified Carlisle. But it was a delicious sort of terror he could no longer deny having needed for the longest time. The days were growing sketchy around him; he was _searching_ more than he was _seeing _these days. He was distracted.

He went to the cemetery at night to clear away these distractions. His thoughts were like cobwebs crowding a broom cupboard. Everyone else treated them like something that must be cleaned away, but he allowed them to collect in the dark, dusty room of his mind. Anyone else would have been claustrophobic upon entering this cluttered haven, but Carlisle was quite at home here.

The graves watched him with their silent stone eyes, until he took shelter beneath the heavy shade of a weeping willow. The dry vines caressed his shoulders in welcome, and he curled against the safe bark of the tree with his journal on his knee.

If he was brave enough to raise his pen to the page, he would scribble the first thoughts that came to his mind. The first cobwebs were cleared.

Here he drew, in elaborate words, a rough but ideal schematic for his _someone. _

Strange, he thought, that a familiar face had been the first to come to his mind. He was unable to create anyone himself he was not God but his memory offered him a base upon which he could build.

She was there for an instant; a timid smile on lopsided lips, rouge-dusted cheeks and a weak chin, with dimples like stars that twinkle in and out of the sky. She stared at him, her mottled hazel eyes piercing him somewhere far inside... somewhere he suspected he _hoped _was very close to his soul...

"Esme," he said her name out loud. Once, since the night he had spoken it in her presence. Here under the willow tree, he whispered it for the eavesdropping ghosts. And that was the only time he'd said it.

It was insignificant, both as a word and as a name. She was only a girl, much like any other he had treated. So many there were, and there would be many more. He was never attached to them. Carlisle did not allow himself to become attached to anything. His heart had already been pulled and stretched in too many directions. He was not going to challenge its elasticity anymore.

_Esme Platt... Esme... Sixteen-year-old with a broken leg. Columbus, Ohio. _

The memories strung together and weaved in and out of his consciousness, repeating over and over like a frustrating lullaby. There was something mysterious about the young woman. Something was hiding there, in that memory of her, something he had to uncover.

Like a restless reflex, his wrist propped open the cover of his journal, and held it firmly against his knee. Feverishly, Carlisle blotted the ink of his pen on the corner of the page and began to write:

_October 3, 1912_

_I am thinking of her. _

_She has crossed my mind again, on this cold autumn night. What demons have caused this innocent young woman to resurface, in flashes, in strikes? She is a summer storm inside my mind. She appears without warning, sometimes _— _nowhere near often, but often enough to taunt me. What does she want to tell me?_

_I feel _— _I fear _— _that there is something terrible lingering on her horizon. But how do I justify such a fantasy? Am I simply mad from my loneliness? Why are my thoughts plagued by the image of her face, in moments when I never expect the recollection to sting? _

_Why do I long for this insignificant reunion with young Esme Platt? Why have I thought of her so rarely, but the times I do think of her are so deeply wounding to my curiosity? _

_Esme Platt was my patient. Nothing more. Surely she is in less danger this very instant than she would be in my presence. Yet I wish she was by my side once more, that I might look into her eyes and see that she is truly safe. I would mend any injuries she may have collected in the months since we've last seen one another. I would lecture her about climbing trees during storms and send her on her way. _

_I long for just one more moment with her, to know that she will see her way safely through life . . ._

_I am thinking of her this night. _

_I have thought of her. _

_And now the thought is finished. _

The ink pooled on the final word as he let the tip of the pen linger for longer than the page would have liked. The ink bled through the corner, forever marking that page as one that would stand apart from the rest when he flipped idly through his journal.

A tiny pang ruptured his heart every time he noticed it. He remembered it as Esme Platt's page. It disturbed him so much to the point where he decided to burn the entire journal.

This began an annual ritual. Every year, Carlisle would destroy his journals in a fire, exorcizing the demons that fled through ink from his mind to the paper.

Her eyes flashed before him, in a flame that reached further than all the others. Her spirit swayed from the blackened pages, dancing before him in a transparent wisp of smoke. Hers was the only gaze that held his with a grip of honest care and kindness. Her curiosity and silent wonder, her every coy blink, every shy smile all tucked away in his mind forever. The scent of the fire sealed the memory of Esme Platt behind a dark curtain that would never be parted.

As the years passed by, though, Carlisle's hands were restless when he viewed that curtain, rippling in the wind. Sometimes he would break the rule, and he would draw the curtain open, spare himself a fleeting glance of the beauty that hid behind it, and walk away in silence again.

He thought of her, on a train ride to Alaska. It was raining hard, and as the droplets assaulted his window, speeding past mountains and streams, he remembered Esme. His eyes welled with venom as he remembered the way the tears rolled down her cheeks when he set the bones in her leg.

He thought of her, in the woods at night. While chasing after the beasts of the forest, he thought he heard her gasp in his ears. He whipped around to face the shadows, sacrificing the blood he raced after, but nothing was there.

He thought of her, when patients watched him extra closely as he tended to their injuries. Especially if the patient was a woman a young one, with large, unblinking, doe-like hazel eyes...

If he ever smiled, it was completely accidental. The memory of Esme Platt had many strange ways of affecting him. Sometimes he smiled, other times he just sighed fondly. Sometimes he was saddened by her face, and other times he was frightened thinking of what had become of her.

But at the end of the day, it was just an instant in the endless hourglass of eternity. Carlisle laid Esme Platt to rest behind the cool, black curtain in the back of his mind and went on with his lonely life, burning his journals year after year, never bothering to clear the cobwebs away.

* * *

_**A/N: **__Thank you for reading; I'd love to hear what you thought of this chapter. I had an interesting time writing it. _


	5. Rain on Her Wedding Day

**Rain on Her Wedding Day**

* * *

_"Under every full moon, a woolgathering world idles." _— _Lorraine Skylark_

******-}0{-**

"How do you do?" was the first thing he said to her. He was polite, rough-spoken, but mannerly as far as she could see.

"I'm well, thank you."

She gave a nod of her head and watched as he placed his cigar down on the table. The sunlight faded just as he turned his chair to face her, and Esme received her first clear glimpse of Charles Evenson's face.

His face was very square, a wide-set jaw, and deep-set eyes. Short, rust-colored hair framed his head, the sideburns neatly trimmed at a fashionable length beside his ears. The stubble was darker along his jaw, and formed a thin bridge across his upper lip somehow, the unnecessary show of facial hair made him look infinitely more intelligent and intimidating. His eyes were too dark to find their color at first glance, but his wry sort of smile was not entirely off-putting.

The small hand behind her weakly nudged her forward. "I'll be leaving now," her mother whispered. "Remember, you have until noon."

Esme cringed at the time limit. Twenty minutes was scarcely enough time to get to know anyone, yet she wished to run away the moment the clock started to tick in her head.

Charles nodded as the elder woman left the patio and tilted one finger up towards him, signaling for Esme to step forward. He stared at her for a long moment, wasting precious time that should have been spent asking what she thought of the day, or telling her how lovely she looked. His gaze was thick with critique, low in appraisal, stiff.

"Your father was a fine man," he finally spoke.

Esme resisted the urge to scoff.

"He knew his business. He made due with what he had been given and he did it well. Better than most men I know."

Esme had so little to offer to such a conversation. Not only had it been only a month since her father's passing, but her knowledge of business matters was severely limited. If Charles Evenson was looking for a rich discussion, he was going about it in all the wrong way.

"You don't speak much," he remarked, a wicked glint on his eye. He did not sound curious, only amused. Before she could open her mouth to offer a word, he added bluntly, "I like that."

So she sealed her lips.

"Won't you please sit down?" he offered, finally sounding a bit more gentlemanly.

"Thank you," she whispered, hoping the reply would not discredit her likable quality of quietness.

She seated herself across from him at the small table, her heart thudding as she listened to the carefree harping of the birds. She thought it strange that their chirps could not calm her nerves. They had always been able to help ease her in the past, but today they only made things worse. The sounds of nature drew a line through Esme's world and the world around her. She was locked at this table with this man she barely knew, and here it was dim. Around them, the world went on, bright and foreign, wanting nothing to do with them…

Something awful settled in the pit of her stomach.

The man across from her raised one thick eyebrow and squinted as the sun touched his forehead.

"I've only seen you once before. I don't know if you recall he continued conversationally, "You were most likely no more than sixteen at the time."

"Oh," she murmured, keeping her eyes on the clouds.

"You ran away when your father tried to introduce us."

At this, Esme felt a pang of apology rise in her chest. No matter how unaffected this man appeared to be by nature, she could not help but feel guilty that she had somehow offended him. To offend anyone was unacceptable to Esme.

"I'm sorry," she stammered, trying to force a laugh. "I was always rather shy."

But when she looked up at Charles, he was smiling. It seemed genuine, in the sunlight, and it was not all so bad. Perhaps she ought to look people in the eyes more often.

Casually, he picked up his cigar and took a conservative smoke. "I find that amusing."

Her hopes sunk a little at his comment. "How so?"

His eyes shot back to her, and she immediately felt a spring of terror seize her spine, wondering if she had somehow gone past the line by inquiring his sentiments.

"I just do," he answered, still smiling crisply.

That was the line. _His _line. She only had to hear it once to know this. She would be hearing it often from this day forward, she supposed.

Those twenty minutes spent in the cold sunlight while he smoked his cigar were not as wasteful as she had thought they would be. She had come away from it having learned a valuable lesson.

It was better not to argue with Charles Evenson once he'd made up his mind.

******-}0{-**

"He's in the hall," her mother informed, rushing past Esme with a fresh bin of laundry over her shoulder. "He wants to speak with you before he leaves tonight."

Esme suppressed a shudder as she hurried down the stairs to find him.

"Charles?"

"Here." His voice made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, but she didn't know why.

She nearly rammed into his chest as she came around the corner, her eyes wide in surprise as he held up both hands to steady her. He was laughing darkly at her as he usually did when she had a clumsy encounter. "Good God, I swear I've seen raccoons less jittery than you."

It was possibly the closest he would ever come to teasing her, but it made her smile nevertheless.

Esme covered her heart with her hand, waiting for the thudding to settle as he watched her breathe with a strange look in his eyes. He seemed to be pondering a decision, or perhaps he had already decided something, and was pondering how to tell her.

She wasn't sure she was ready to hear it, in any means. But he was up to the front before she'd caught her breath.

"I'm heading to Boston; my train leaves tonight. I don't have much time, but I wanted to discuss something with you before I leave."

He was all business. Her lungs felt a little tight, but she nodded for him to continue.

He stood up a bit straighter, and his head blocked out the light from the open door to the dining room.

"When I return in a week, I will have made a very important deal with a company from a larger city," he spoke in simplified terms, in a way to help a woman understand the complicated language of business.

He seemed impatient, so she urged him on. "I understand. Yes?"

His face twitched irritably, but he had been working on smoothing it out. He was getting better at masking. "My career is at a healthy point, Esme. And I believe as well as your mother that you should consider…"

Her heart began its thudding as soon as his words took shape in her ears. She could not hear anything past that point; everything was drowned out by the whirling thoughts in her mind. A chaotic tumbling of destinations and invalid reasons ensued within her head.

"…What do you say, Esme? Do you agree?"

She could not respond, having heard only less than half of what he'd said. But she knew too well what had been offered to her. Just the way he was looking at her then the darkest, the most hollow she had ever seen his eyes told her so clearly what he had requested.

But with Charles Evenson, how could she ever refuse what he had offered? How could anything this man uttered in that tone be a _request_? It was nothing but a trap. She could not refuse him for the life of her, while her mother was upstairs, waiting with folded hands for her only daughter to save her…

Esme's eyes did not meet his, but instead they stayed focused on the mismatched purple wallpaper behind his shoulder, tracing over every familiar swirling pattern like it was the last piece of her life she would ever look upon.

"Yes."

******-}0{-**

No one had ever told Esme that her wedding would be a dark one.

Weddings, as she had always imagined them to be in her young naive mind, were frosting white and flowery and fine. They were sunshine and laughing relatives and hope for a wonderful future to come.

On the day of Esme's wedding, it rained.

"Oh, such horrid luck, child!" her grandmother tutted, shaking her old gray head at the stormy window.

"Oh, stop it, Mother. You're frightening her."

But Esme could see her own mother was just as concerned. They were a superstitious lot, her family. They always had been. And yet they tormented _her _for being the one with her head in the clouds. Better to have her head in the clouds than in her...

"Esme!" the dressing maid hissed, accidentally pricking her unruly model with the end of a pin. "For heaven's sake, hold still!"

But Esme was always moving. If her body could not fidget, then her mind would. Her thoughts were running faster than a locomotive, and all of them were dreary and dark and dangerous.

"Alright, _now _you may turn around."

On her cue, Esme turned slowly and faced the mirror.

She looked like hell.

On her wedding day, of all days.

Of course it was still six in the morning. She had an excuse for looking so nightmarish.

She stared at her reflection in the poorly lit room, barely able to recognize herself. She wasn't worthy of recognition.

Only in her dreams did anyone want to look at her.

Esme's mind still reeled with the remains of the last dream she had, just an hour before all of this madness had begun.

She had dreamt of _him_.

It was the first time in six years, since she had stepped out of adolescence, that she had dreamt of that angelic doctor.

God had been cruel to Esme this morning, for He had chosen to grant her a dream in which she married not the staid, stoic, average Charles Evenson, but the glorious, caring, handsome Doctor Cullen.

In her dream she did not look like the wreck of a woman she saw in her mirror. She was glowing. The way a bride was meant to look on her wedding day.

She wore a brilliant snow white gown, and a veil of ornate lace. In her hands she clutched a bouquet of red roses, her fingers tickled by baby's breath. She walked down the aisle of a grand cathedral, not a small town church. The long, open aisle was empty save for her groom at the altar. No one would be witness to their marriage but God himself.

As she neared him, his face became clearer. His golden blond hair, the chiseled angles of his beautiful face, his eyes shimmering like sand under the sun...

And his smile. His heart-breaking, pulse-dropping, breathtaking smile. Even in her dream, that smile sent a sweet, slow fever racing through her slumbering body.

It was a sight she wanted to wake up to every morning for the rest of her life. she wanted to see that face on the pillow beside her every night before she fell asleep. She would never want anything else.

This was why waking up on the morning of her actual wedding was one thousand times worse than it should have been. Esme had dreaded this morning since she had gotten herself engaged or since her mother had forced her into an engagement.

"It's what your father would have wanted," she simpered, false tears fogging her basset hound eyes.

Why Esme should give any living tribute to her dead father was beyond her. He had never shown the slightest ounce of care toward her since the day she was born. No one had. They pretended to, of course. But the sad truth was, she was an unwanted daughter.

Esme's childhood had been full of dull chores and harsh labor on her family's farm. She had been uneducated until she was well into her preteen years, where she was teased relentlessly for her slowness in school. Adolescence brought out the worst in her peers, and every day was a living nightmare of catty girls with prettier, more mature features than she possessed. The friends she did have were as backstabbing as the next pair of girls, and there were so few where she lived. No matter where she went, everyone was against her. She had just been a cursed child.

That was why that single stormy night when she was sent tumbling out of a tree with a broken leg was the defining moment of her life. She sensed that she could be cared for, that at least one person in the world thought she was worth his time.

Her hopes would be dashed this morning. She was sending herself into permanent exile.

The eyes of the woman who stared back at her from the mirror filled with tears. This was the end. She was about to give herself to another man.

Esme had always known she would never find a man who measured up to Doctor Cullen. She was not naive enough to believe that her Prince Charming would be anything like the angel she had met so very long ago. But she had at least hoped to push him far enough into the back of her mind, to move on and marry with _some _sense of happiness.

The marriage she was about to enter was not going to be so happy.

Esme knew Charles to be a haughty businessman who rarely devoted any attention to her, and when he did, it was a cleverly crafted show for the audience of her family. He was marrying her for convenience. She was marrying him for her mother's sake.

A part of Esme wished to run away, run somewhere where none of them would ever think to look for her. A place she could hide for the rest of her life no forced marriage, no obligations to spend time with the horrible people she had come to know.

But she hadn't the courage for such bold action. She was trapped.

The rain began to slow outside the small window of her dressing room. In the distance she could just make out the edge of that tree on the top of the hill… She savored the moment as the last time she would be seeing that familiar view from her window. Tomorrow she would be with her husband in a strange house. A house she would never be able to call home. Esme could scarcely call her childhood house her home. Home was where people loved each other, where fond memories of laughter and kisses filled the halls. She knew no such place.

She had dared to imagine what her future home would have been like, had she married the man of her dreams. They would have lived in a beautiful mansion where each room was painted a different color; a garden in the front and back yard, perhaps by a lake, somewhere in the forest, away from the rest of society. Most importantly, they would have had children together, something her future husband wanted nothing to do with.

Charles just had too cold a heart to care for children. Meanwhile, Esme would have given anything to have just one.

Now she was going to throw away that chance for good.

Love, as Esme knew it, had always been a false emotion. She was about to enter a sacrament that based its foundation on love, without even knowing what genuine love was.

She had had a taste of the mysterious emotion when she was sixteen years old. That, she supposed, was love.

Sucking in a deep breath, Esme escorted herself stiffly down the aisle toward the end of her life. She did not recognize at least ninety percent of those present, which disturbed her greatly. It was appropriate; she had hardly been given the chance to even meet anyone whom she would have cared to invite to the biggest day of her life or at least what was supposed to be the biggest day...

The stares she received were mostly sympathetic, as they should be. But they did not know what she was giving up. They pitied her for being of late age for marriage, but she knew better. she would have rather grown to be an old maid who died alone than to marry a man she did not love. But her mother thought otherwise, and Esme hadn't the power to break her.

Esme had avoided eye contact with Charles all through the ceremony, choosing instead to cleverly disguise her disappointment with demureness in front of the priest.

The lines she had imagined would sound magical coming from the priest beside her sounded more like a death sentence. She felt like she was in a courthouse after all, about to face persecution.

The simple golden band was slipped onto her finger, and it may as well have been a shackle.

"I do." The words meant nothing. Not a hint of commitment in the voice of the man who was to become her husband.

Husband.

The word suddenly sounded repulsive so unlike what she had helplessly trained herself to picture when someone said that word...

"Do you, Esme Anne Platt, take Charles Gregory Evenson to be your lawfully wedded husband…to have and to hold…to love and to cherish…till death do you part?"

Never.

"I do."

A single teardrop fell from her eye, and she knew it would be mistaken for one of sentimentality. Her entire charade was ironic in its timely perfection.

"I now pronounce you man and wife."

_No._

Everything in that moment was a nauseating blur. The motionless congregation waiting for the sacrament to be made certain, the stained glass saints staring down at her with their unfeeling eyes, God's merciful order hanging over her head in the form of a dusty chandelier. Esme wanted it all of the mindless swirling to suck her down into the ground in a whirlpool of ruptured colors. She wanted to escape, feeling unsafe and unwanted even on the altar of a church…

"You, Good Sir, may kiss your bride."

God should have chosen this moment to send her an angel.

* * *

_**A/N:** Thank you for reading. I've always wanted to portray the heartbreak that was Esme's first marriage to Charles. This is what I came up with. I loved exploring Esme's human background as it gives much more depth to her character. Was the portrayal of her marriage close to what you might have expected? If you have a second to review, I would appreciate it. _

_Thank you,_

_Mackenzie_


	6. Where All the Windows Are Black

**Where All the Windows Are Black**

* * *

"_Cruelty is fed, not weakened, by tears" __—__ Publilius Syrus_

******-}0{-**

His rust-colored hair was dark. There were sparse strands of gray, just beginning to appear behind his ears.

Esme sometimes counted those gray strands when he yelled to her face for no reason, when there was nothing else to distract her.

He was not yelling now. But that was the catch. When he was not yelling, he was either fuming or just on the edge of that unpredictable implosion.

"I seem to have missed reading my newspaper today," he remarked, the start of a vicious glint in his dark eyes. Sometimes Esme thought that glint was the most terrifying of all his signals. It marked the beginning of something something she knew she would be powerless to stop once it started. He was already angry, and anything she could do to try and extinguish the flames would only make the fire grow.

Her hands twisted nervously in her apron, wondering how she was going to find a way through the flames of this one.

His thick brows rose expectantly when she did not reply.

"My evening has been ever so dull," he mentioned disdainfully as Esme made a show of clattering dishes around in the sink.

She was still silent. Sometimes it was better to provoke him with silence rather than words. At least then he could not blame her for blasphemy.

"I always expect my newspaper directly before supper."

He was waiting for an explanation, and no matter how long she danced around her answer, she would eventually have to give it to him. Once he began to drum his impatient fingers on the table, she knew her time was running out.

"I..."

"Yes?" he all but barked.

Slowly she lifted her head, and her eyes met their own reflection in the black window pane. The woman who stared back at her looked like she was dead. She might as well have been...

"I forgot to bring it in this morning," Esme confessed shakily, but her tone was bland, as safe and unaffected as she could be. She was a practiced actress. "It rained, and when I remembered to go out, it had already been ruined."

He exhaled in a rough, succinct manner. It could have been a laugh, but it was never genuine humor with Charles.

She glared at the night through the small window in front of her, imagining his leering face behind her.

"You know what that means, Esme."

Of course she knew. She knew of nothing else.

Her hands froze under the running water. Nothing but the empty gush of the faucet and her own blank stare in the window touched her senses. In her mind, there was but one thought racing around in frantic, helpless circles. _"Please, God. Help me, God." _

But it was useless pleading to a figment who was apparently as helpless as she was.

God was merciful. In Esme's world, the merciful were the weak. The loving were cast aside, and the good were trampled.

Esme was weak, cast aside, and trampled. Because her heart was merciful, loving, and good.

The window is still black and blank before her eyes as the gush of the water has abruptly stopped. Her hands are smarting from the temperature which she has still not processed to be either freezing cold or scalding hot. It does not matter she will not be using her hands for a long while anyway...

The muffled squeak of his footsteps on the tile rings in her ears as he approaches her, and her back stiffens instinctively. He pulls her away from the sink, and her feet are obedient. They do not stay in that small square of safety by the cabinet doors. Her eyes are losing vision, now. That familiar feeling of lightheadedness seeps behind her forehead and brings in waves of graceful anxiety.

His hand grips her elbow and it feels like it may never work again. But it always does. Somehow she always works again.

It does not matter where he takes her. She has long since learned that her screams will never be heard. So she stopped screaming. It was easier on her throat. One less part of her would hurt in the morning, and that was the least she could do for her poor, broken body.

Sometimes Esme wonders if there are men who exist in the world who are nothing like Charles. Are they all the same? Are they all living a lie in the sunlight and a horror story in the home? Are their wives just as false, just as useless, just as broken?

Are the windows in their homes as blank as they are in hers?

Some days she remembers a man she once knew very, very long ago. She wonders sometimes if he was real. Some days when she is alone in the house she dreams that he is knocking the door. When she does not answer, he breaks the locks and somehow finds a way inside.

He stands in the sunlight, like bright truth incarnate. He is tall, wearing a dark overcoat and carrying a black leather bag. Even clothed in darkness, he glows like the windows of a church. His eyes burn like warm stained glass, and his pale forehead wrinkles softly in worry.

He knows she is hurting; he knows she is alone.

She knows he has come to rescue her.

He steps into the house without a sound and places his bag on the table. His pale hands come to the front of his coat, and he takes the darkness away. Underneath he is clothed in light; over his chest a pure white shirt, and trousers like sand in the sunshine. Esme has never seen a vision so heartbreakingly handsome. He looks so warm, and his face looks… so young.

As a good doctor does, he rolls up his sleeves and gathers a bundle of bandages and small white cloths. She watches him from the corner where she is tucked away, shivering from the fear that her husband will return and find her with a strange man. But as the familiar blond stranger steps closer to her hiding place, she feels the shudders leave her body once and for all.

Her fear melts like a demon under the palm of God.

Doctor Cullen sinks to the ground on one knee before her. She is at first overcome by the headiness of such an intrusion. It has been so long since she has known any company other than that of her cruel husband. She flinches as the doctor reaches toward her, and as his eyes furrow in pity, she sees that he will not hurt her.

He will never hurt her.

He tries again, and this time she allows his hand to make contact.

She lets him touch her forehead with the damp white cloth. His hand is disturbingly gentle as he cleans the blood away from her broken skin. The feel of his fingers brings tears to her eyes as they trace caringly over her aching bruises.

She can do nothing but stare helplessly up into his beautiful face as he patiently heals her. She is stricken by the familiarity of his tender lips, the strong curves of his jaw, the merciful angle at which he has tilted his head for her to see him all of him. He is not timid or uncertain or afraid. He is calm and steadfast and brave.

All she wants is to be healed. All she longs for is that pair of caring hands, a pure and tender touch.

She aches to reach out for him, to feel the light that radiates from him, to immerse herself in the welcoming warmth of his presence. But when she lifts her tired arm to touch him, her fingers float through his chest like a ghost.

He is not really there not one part of him is real. Not his flaxen hair or his compassionate eyes or his gentle hands. In a gust of glitter, her imagination bleeds into reality, pulling her glorious guardian along with it.

Doctor Cullen disappears before he can mend her wounds.

As always, having no way to ever thank him haunts her every time.

Where the doctor once knelt before her, the businessman now beats against her.

Golden blond shortens and turns to rust. Long, pale fingers shrink, and smooth white hands grow ruddy and chapped. The clear scent of purity is replaced by the burn of borrowed brandy. The face before her is no longer beautiful and serene. And oddly enough, this face she now sees is nowhere near as familiar as the stranger's had been.

This man with the rust-colored hair and the dark, glinting eyes, and the red, calloused hands is the stranger. He always has been; no matter how well she knows him, she will never understand him.

He pulls her hair down, scrapes her neck just a tad, but she knows the sting won't come until much later.

For now, she is numb. Her eyes wander about the walls, watching the world through every blank, black window, wondering idly if the light will ever again care to show its face.

* * *

_**A/N: **__I know this one is not a happy chapter, it's why I kept it as short as possible. But I wanted to show a snapshot of what Esme's life with Charles would have been like the strange blend of unpredictability and monotony that comes with an abusive relationship. She is numb, but she still feels pain. I think this sense would have stuck with her into her immortal life, whether she is aware of it or not. It definitely shapes who Esme is as a character, and I wanted to at least touch on that element here because it is so often hidden in my other stories. _


	7. Never Wish to be Alone

**Never Wish to be Alone**

* * *

_"Curiosity is the lust of the mind."_ —_Thomas Hobbes_

******-}0{-**

The days are predictable.

The mornings are crisp, full with a pang of dull blue sunrays that slip like slender swords through the window. The doctor lays in his bed, and the first ray spears his dead heart, a light bouncing gently off the bare spot on his chest, and it burns him. His skin responds to the gift with fine little shimmers, but his eyes are still tired, though they long not for sleep.

He will linger here for a while longer, his body cooling the sheets beneath him. A thin veil of frost on the floor length windows reminds him that he must shiver right about now. So he does. His soul shivers as well. The sheets around him, though cold, are the closest to warmth he will ever feel; so he feels the need to remain here, arms outstretched on the fine, thin cotton, head cradled by the loving lap of a satin pillow.

Some mornings the cold silence gets the better of him. If he dares, he will imagine the presence of another on the bed beside him. She is faceless, a simple spirit of the female essence, impossibly nameless. Here she is his alone, in this half-darkened room, by the silver shards of seductive, frostbitten sunlight. His outstretched arm will reach out even further, fingers twitching invitingly for the slender hand he knows must be there...

If she chooses to return the grasp, he will barely feel it. Her fingers whisper over his, touch him indecently in the center of his open palm, tease the underside of his forefinger, draw elaborate, foreign, sometimes suggestive shapes on his skin. She paints an invisible bracelet a lewd narrative around his sensitive wrist. He pulls back his hand possessively, with a gasp of outrage, his hand hitting hard against his dead heart. He will not be anyone's artwork.

His breath is rough and fast after this frightening encounter, the stirrings of that irrepressible urge tingling like the filigree of an unfed fire on his belly. Other men should suffer castration anxiety in the presence of such a woman, but a vampire should feel no threat to his power. And perhaps it is not a threat he feels as he lies limp in this bed; perhaps it is just that familiar sting of vulnerability, of lusting after something he can never have. That slap in the stomach that comes with knowing his needs will remain unsatisfied, forever fermenting in the pit of his heart. Like wine, they richen over the years. Their bouquet is scandalous in its fragrant perfection. He could make use of these desires, but he never even lifts them from the cellar.

If he is not clear in his decision to abstain, her fingers will return, snaking up his bare arm, sliding down his chest, and circling about his navel, all the while knowing how her touch shall affect him. His imaginary counterpart believes it is time to drink the wine he has cultivated.

This nameless woman of dreaded dawn is strongest in the early hours in the very hours when _he_ is weakest. But he had asked for her hand, and she had done nothing wrong by returning the hold. He had asked for her because he wanted her. _He desired her. _

That desire hurt him. It stabbed him in every piece of his body, and plunged into the most fragile spots of his soul. He could toss and turn all he wanted in those cold, cold sheets, but he feared the power even the gentlest friction might have against his body. Saddening, that such simple movement could destroy him if he gave in to it. He had no choice left but to remain still, like the solemn, sexless statue that he was. Forever an untouched slab of marble, less than half the man his sculptor had intended him to be when He had started carving. As a man, Carlisle was... unfinished in every way. Incomplete in every way.

Lying dormant on the bed sheets in winter seems to bring this misfortune to light.

Eventually the weary doctor will rise from the bed, untampered sheets still smooth and straight. He has never tucked himself in; he always lays on the surface a theme that carries from the bed to the rest of the world.

So very much of his life is just skimming the surface. Once he leaves that door, he is only a doctor. Another face to speak of hope and medical remedies to men who worry for the health they have. To own something as fragile and burdensome as health seems so daunting. He wonders how they can do it, how he once did it himself...

His days are much the same rather like slightly tweaked variations of the same familiar song. He doesn't mind it… not really. Carlisle was content with minimal variety, so long as he was pleased with what he was doing. Pleasure, for Carlisle, came from feeling useful, from a sense of duty and accomplishment from being constructive for the sake of construction. If this was the tempo he was meant to follow, he would keep up well with the timing.

The variety in his life comes after the workday is done and gone. The calm or the chaos from the hospital that day will flitter through his mind, all the way up the front walk until his hand touches the doorknob. He welcomes himself inside.

His home. His life. His son.

They cocoon themselves in their favorite room the study the intellectual chapel of books, and crackling fire, and dancing candles, and philosophical smirks. Their conversation becomes richer as the hours grow later. There is a thrill to this procedure, a knowing secret passed between them, two vampires who have set themselves apart from the rest of the world. It gives them a sense of belonging to something _else_ this strange, wise, mysterious little cult they've seemed to establish in this library of mostly silence.

Edward loves to ask questions. Carlisle loves to think of answers. The pattern reverses itself some nights; sometimes it is a full-blown interrogation from one for the other. They know each other well, it seems. Many secrets are entrusted, many feelings are foiled. But one night was all it took for the pattern to be thrown off-kilter.

It was too silent in the room silent enough that the lack of sound was something sacrilegious. It had only been a matter of time before one of them fed their need to fill it.

"Who is she?" Edward softly demanded, his voice weaving between the candle flames to his sire's ear. The clock on the mantel ticked by expectantly, the answer lingering on the very back of the doctor's tongue.

Carlisle's breath hitched. A vision of pale yellow lace and bleary hazel eyes tucked itself hastily into the helm of his subconscious.

He would be a fool to play coy, to ask "_Who is who?" _Edward knew better, and Carlisle never pretended to forget the boy's advantages. But there was a moment where he _wanted _to don a hood of innocence, to settle into his chair and turn the next page in his book and shrug it off.

It was too significant to simply shrug off. Edward could see this.

It was time to tell him. What harm would it do?

"She was my patient not long before I treated you," Carlisle spoke in muted, elegant tones. "Her name was Esme Platt. She fell from a tree and broke her leg. I sometimes revisit the memory without precedent," he almost finished there, but then... "It happens with many of my patients."

He tried to protect his lips from the inevitable wince that would seize them. Such a spill! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth closed for once?

Damn it all. That was the equivalent of a vocal shrug.

Edward's deep eyes narrowed in a surprisingly gentle way his gaze was quite a sight to witness like this his intellect and his awareness all pulled into one dark, burning intensity. He was a predator and more information was his prey.

"I've yet to see another patient of yours turn up without precedent."

Carlisle leaned back in his chair, sighing heavily. "The mind is a mystery, is it not?" he pretended to be baffled himself. "This thought is how shall I put it? _a resident anomaly_, Edward. You of all people should recognize that."

"_A resident anomaly _does not reoccur once every other month, only to be forced away at the first _hint _of its appearance." Edward's annunciation was dark, calculated. He set his book aside, ready to continue speaking.

"There is nothing significant about her Carlisle interrupted gently. "She's a peculiarity, I suppose. She was one of my youngest patients. One of the few female patients I've had..."

Of all the reasons for why she _should _be turning up uninvited in his head all these years later, none were very convincing... But they were all legitimate despite their being chosen in a flurry of desperation.

"You don't say," Edward smiled.

"It isn't something I've struggled to keep private." Carlisle's lips formed a firm line.

"Really?" Edward's eyebrows rose. "You seem reluctant to dwell on it for more than a few seconds at a time. Honestly, had you allowed the thought to sink in like any other, I might not feel such suspicion surrounding it."

This baffled the doctor.

Carlisle caved.

"Do I really try to hide it?" he asked lightly, in awe.

"I don't know kind of," Edward muttered, calmer. "There's an... aversion there. Almost like you're afraid of thinking about her."

Carlisle chuckled softly, doing his best to ignore the tiny chip in his control. "Why would I _fear_ a sixteen-year-old girl?"

In his mind, the word _'woman'_ was a silky echo behind the spoken words.

Edward's teeth scraped against each other uncomfortably. "I haven't the slightest."

The chip in Carlisle's control became a crack. Swiftly, he set down his book, pulled his notes together and rushed into a final speech. "Well, then it's settled. There is no reason for me to think of her, and so I shan't. From this day forward I shall no longer plague you with my unprecedented thoughts of Esme Platt." His voice unintentionally rose in volume as he drew out the words, a forced edge of politeness polluting his tone.

Edward slid back a bit in his chair, looking more surprised than offended. "I didn't mean for-"

"It's fine, Edward."

"I'll leave for a while."

"No." The word was desperate, fast, sharp, warming. Carlisle's eyes were wide, glassy and golden, pleading.

_I do not wish to be left alone._

It hurt Edward, in a disturbingly profound way, to see the doctor looking so vulnerable. Just the thought of being left behind made his chest tighten and his stomach churn a familiar sensation that Edward only recalled feeling as a very young boy when he would lose sight of his parents in a crowded place. The pity he felt for Carlisle was unbearable. Carlisle was such a powerful man, but he did not even recognize the power he had. Were the tick of the clock and the hum of the wind and the crackle of the fire not enough company for a man to feel safe?

Apparently they were not. Not for Carlisle Cullen, at the very least.

So Edward seated himself back down by the fire, conditioned to learn this for every familiar situation thereafter.

Carlisle would _never_ wish to be left alone.

* * *

_**A/N: **__This is one small little piece I've had sitting around since before I even posted Behind Stained Glass, so if the style sounds slightly different from my current writing, that's why. I wanted to envision how Carlisle would go about sharing his memories of Esme with Edward. Anyway, I thought I might as well add it here since I have not updated this story in a while. But I do have more chapters planned, so don't give up on me yet!_


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